The present day condition of foot traffic of Kant's Island is similar to a reservation, where a Cathedral and sculpture park were placed. To reach former Kneiphof Island, which is devoid of its four bridges, one must climb an elevated bridge, which people try to avoid if there is no real necessity: it's noisy, windy, gas-polluted … uncomfortable. Territorially Kant's Island is almost cut off for walks, and this clearly does it no good. Isn't a reason for the fact that there is only a faint glimmer of life on the island on non-holidays? Or is it a territory haunted by Konigsberg's ghosts, who are inclined to walks (we dare not point at them)?

But if we imagine that at least one of the bridges was restored, for example the one behind the House of Sailors, the view will be absolutely different. People living near the "Children's World" shop and the rest of the residents will gain easy access to the island, which will not be a suburb in the city center any more. And the island will have an absolutely different life. What an idealistic picture!

On 2 September 2001 a group of architects, writers and historians (Dmitri Vyshemirskii, Oleg Vasiutin, Olga Dmitrieva, Sergei Ananiin, Alexander Popadin and others) carried out a symbolic art campaign entitled "Erecting Bridges." Its aim was to remind that Kant's Island was once connected to the "main land" (in a strange way it parallels the problematic connection between Kaliningrad and "continental Russia") by several bridges, when it had a hectic life and was not immured in "museum amber."

We used pegs to mark the places where four bridges used to be situated, and the names of vanished bridges were written with chalk on asphalt in an imaginary canvas of bridges: Green, Giblets, Blacksmith and Store bridges - can you hear the physiology of old Konigsberg resounding in these names?

But establishing boundaries is not enough, because a bridge is a passage across a river. While there are still no bridges at this place, which has been trodden over by a million footsteps during previous centuries, it is possible that something symbolic could be ferried across the river. Thorny chestnuts became the symbolic nucleus of this action. Participants of the action wrapped them up in bandages, wrote the name of a bridge and their family name and threw them to the other bank of the river (with the help of a sling shot where the Pregel was too wide). Throws were made from the old quay Altshtadt (presently between Moskovskii Prospect and Kant's Island) to Kneiphof Island (nowadays people call this place Kant's Island, but officially it has no name at all).

Chestnuts were not chosen by chance. First of all, chestnuts are seeds and something can grow from them. It could even be that very chestnut. Second, chestnuts do not grow in most regions of Russia, and when these regions come to Kaliningrad in May, the season when chestnuts are in bloom, one can jam from these regions, weave ropes and join them to the Kaliningrad region - or do whatever one pleases.

So chestnuts are a Kaliningrad strategic argument in the endless comparative rows of "comparison of strength" with our brethren.